I walked into my first week as a Da Vinci Scholar carrying a notebook, a water bottle, and the quiet suspicion that everyone else already knew how research worked. By Friday, I had learned the first rule of research: nobody begins with all the answers. The point is to learn how to ask a better question and then build a careful way of pursuing it.
The Da Vinci Scholars Program brings high school students into faculty-led research groups in engineering, science, computing, and innovation. We work with University faculty, undergraduate researchers, and graduate students, and we meet as a cohort each week. That structure makes the campus feel welcoming without making the experience feel simplified. We are treated as beginners, but also as people capable of contributing.
This was also a week of endings at Catholic University. The first six-week and first online seven-week Summer Sessions concluded on June 27. Around campus, some students were preparing final projects and exams while our group was learning laboratory routines and meeting mentors. Watching them finish made my own starting point feel more real. University work has a rhythm: questions become drafts, drafts become projects, and projects eventually become something you can present, defend, or use.
My mentor explained that research is both technical and social. Data matter, but so do communication, collaboration, and the ability to admit when a result does not support the first idea. That was reassuring. I had imagined college research as a performance by people who never make mistakes. It turns out that good researchers make mistakes carefully, learn from them, and document what happened.
The week changed the way I think about college. It is no longer only a place I may attend after high school. It is a community of people working on questions that matter, with tools, mentors, and peers who help one another move forward. By the end of the program, Da Vinci Scholars will present their experiences and findings. I am not ready for that presentation yet. For the first time, though, I can imagine myself giving it.